Sistemas de Gestión en Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo

1987:211)’ in Japan. These informal guidelines provide a fast IP instrument to solve short-term, low-key problems in specific industries. According to Okimoto (1989:93-5), administrative guidelines have often been argued as a tool o f IP for sunset and declining industries or as trade-related agreements among domestic companies, but have served relatively infrequently as a versatile tool for high technology.

sectoral competitiveness; in turn, sectoral competitiveness will also be affected by GI relations. A dynamic analysis of this changing relationship is necessary .

Accordingly, Gl relations are not static but alter through time (Genther, 1990; Kuo, 1995), from sector to sector and from country to country (Grant, 1989a; Hart, 1992). However, the effect of Gl relations on international competitiveness cannot be simply understood in terms of the role of the state or political institutions, such as Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (M1TI) and Taiwan’s IDB, as mediated through industry policy. GI relations are not controllable just by the state or the private sector. It is a complex phenomenon with many actors involved in shaping relations including agencies, domestic and international firms, foreign government, international organisations and individuals. In all this, the state remains as an important unit of analysis, especially given that the authoritarian Taiwanese state is undergoing a process o f transition and is still involved in industrial activities, but the private sector and the international factors have to be incorporated into the account because of their undeniable importance in shaping GI relations.

In this study, the development of Taiwan’s notebook-sized computer (NPC) and HDTV have been selected as the empirical cases. Both are electronic-related industries which has emerged as the most important single industry since 1980s. Because of their economic centrality and increasing competitiveness in international markets, the relationship between government and industry is worthy of examination.

Manufacturing industries have long been the heart of Taiwan’s economy. Their share of GDP increased from 22% in 1965 to 34% in 1990. The average annual growth rate (in % of GDP) was 14.6% in 1965-80 and 7.7% in 1980-90 (TSDB, 1993:309,311).

The importance of the electronics industry to Taiwan’s economy has increased in accordance with its industrial structure shifting from light, labour-intensive industry towards capital- and technological-intensive industry since the 1980s. Taiwan’s highly successful export-oriented industries underwent a gradual transformation in the 1970s, a

period of heavy industrialisation. The textile industry continued to play an important role, but other main exports declined, such as the products of agricultural processing which have been replaced by rising industries, for instance, petrochemicals, iron and steel, electronic goods. Electrical and electronics industries were characterised by relatively low technology and labour-intensiveness at that time. In early 1980s, textiles and garments were the largest single industry. After a decade of the state’s efforts to reallocate sources into the development of technology-intensive industries, the proportion of the export value of these industries has increased substantially and become the largest industry. In 1990 alone, heavy, chemical and technology-intensive products accounted for 54% of the nation’s total exports, while another 40% represented the output of the electronic (including information) and machinery industries.

In 1995, Taiwan became the largest producer of NPC. This leads to the question of whether the government’s programme on the development of NPC in 1990 had the effect of promoting technology and competitiveness. This programme was the first case of a special effort to incorporate public research institutions and individual firms to conduct research and development (R&D) together. How the public research institute, represented as the surrogate of state intervention in the field of innovation, ran this earmarked collaboration and solved the conflicts between government and firms, and between firms provides an experimental model to build public-private cooperation in technological development.

In the case of collaboration to develop HDTV the government realised the importance of HDTV development to integrate different industries into a ‘future’ industry. The government was afraid of losing future markets to rivals. Thus, cooperation between the government and different industries and firms is going on in order to make Taiwan’s HDTV R&D commercialised. Like the development of NPC, the potential market of HDTV is promising, but it is more difficult than NPC because its technology involves many industries, such as electronic, information technology and

telecommunications.

In the case of collaboration to develop NPC, Taiwan has become a strong rival in the international market and it is possible that its HDTV programme will follow suit. Through a cooperative approach to develop and diffuse technology in strategic sectors, the flexibility of smaller firms, the strengths of larger firms and the R&D capacity of public institutions are brought together. The pace of innovation has increased by such alliances. It is still too early to say that the Taiwanese state is the main actor in the process of collaborative innovation before taking industry’s response into account. However, it is safe to argue that the private sector cannot produce technological innovation in such a short time without governmental efforts to promote and link it. In this sense, the GI relations in the case of collaboration to develop technology is more cooperative than adversarial.